Review: Girls and Monsters by Anne Michaud

Title: Girls and Monsters
Author:Anne Michaud
Publisher: Dark Fuse
Published: April 2013
Length: 194 pages
Edition: kindle
Source: Publisher via Netgalley for an honest review

This dark but uplifting collection of five Young Adult novellas includes:

Death Song: Liz is in love with Joe, but the monster of the lake has other plans for them.

Black Dog: Scarlet is engaged in a struggle for her sanity, but according to the voice in her head, she may be too late.

A Blue Story: When Katherine's beloved dog goes missing, she fears her strange new neighbor might be involved.

Dust Bunnies: Christiane faces her childhood arachnophobia and ends up confronting even greater fears in this test of sisterhood.

We Left at Night: Brooke and her family must abandon their home and their lives to make it out of a disease-plagued town overrun by zombies.

Girls & Monsters is for everyone who has ever been brave enough to confront their childhood fears...and lived to tell about it.

A_TiffyFit's Review
This is a compilation of a few short stories about coming of age girls finding inner strength in a time of crisis. Just when they believe they cannot, they find the resolve necessary and overcome the situations at hand. All five stories are incredibly compelling and capitvating.

In "Death Song" Liz Burton faces the Limnade, the lake's mermaid, and saves the guy she is in love with, a guy she has grown up with since childhood. Liz discovers the the town she has always lived in, Lakeside View, has a hidden secret. And worse, its people have made a trade-off so that they may prosper. Essentially all alone, Liz battles this evil.

"Black Dog" is a story of a young girl's fight with an inner demon. The story gives an insight to how the mind works in a person afflicted with this demon: her mind. The Black Dog tells Scarlet, the protagonist, many negative things about herself which of course is not the truth. But the mind's power over Scarlet is great and tells her that the only way she'll get relief is by cutting herself. It is a powerful story about the workings of the mind of a girl trying to feel like she is present in the living and that she has control when everything around is spiraling out of control. The Black Dog is a symbolism for Scarlet's illness, it is her mindfuck. She runs away to London hoping to rid herself of her illness and to have fun. She meets her love and with the powerful strength of that love, she is able to overcome her demon. 

The final story, "We Left at Night," is keeping up with the modern obsession with the Zombie  Apocalypse. It's a short but heartpounding tale and incredibly enjoyable. 

This book is a fun collection to have at hand when you're looking for short, thrilling reads!